


Hand in Hand.

by NightsMistress



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: F/F, implied Fang/Vanille - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 00:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1623002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Vanille dreams, hand clasped in Fang’s and the world resting on her shoulders.  </i>
</p><p>Vanille and Fang, before everything changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hand in Hand.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NaliaRenegade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaliaRenegade/gifts).



Vanille dreams, hand clasped in Fang’s and the world resting on her shoulders. She’s spent so much time dreaming that she doesn’t dream of anything new anymore, but instead of what was. Her dreams would be frightening, if Fang were not there.

*

The story that Vanille tells everyone about how she first met Fang is this: That’s the first thing I remember, meeting Fang. My parents died, and I just cried all the time, until Fang promised to beat up whatever made me sad just to get me to stop! It was so silly, I couldn’t stop myself laughing.

Little of her story is true. Vanille’s memories of her parents are vague, but that’s more to do with the passage of time than amnesia. She remembers her mother’s laugh reverberating through her as she was held to her chest, her father’s callused hand smoothing the riot of curls framing her face, the pet sheep that she had begged them to let her keep. Vanille wears her mother’s bangles and every time they strike one another she remembers her mother. She catches fish with her father’s fishing rod and remembers his hands on hers showing her how to reel fish in. She remembers all of this, and pretends she doesn’t because Fang doesn’t remember her family at all.

For Fang, her memories of family begin at the orphanage, and so Vanille pretends hers do as well.

This is the first lie that she tells. She stumbles over it at first, but lying is easier than the truth. She learned that lies were easy when she was lied to about where her parents were. She had been told by the man at the orphanage that her parents went far away and that was why she was to live at the orphanage now, and she knows this is a lie. She knows that her parents are dead. But she also knows that some truths are just too big to bear. She understands. So she practices her own lie often enough that it comes easily to her. Sometimes she tells it so often that even she believes that she doesn’t remember her parents calling her their little lamb. She practices her smile several times in the morning until it doesn’t feel fake. Soon, she barely notices that her smile is fake. Everything is better this way. Her parents wouldn’t want her to be alone and she hasn’t _really_ forgotten them. She’s just pretending, and when you pretend to make someone else feel better, the pain isn’t that bad.

After all, the way that Fang smiles and says that they’re two of a kind matters more than Vanille’s own feelings.

*

Normally, orphaned children are adopted back into their clans. Oerba loves all of its children, but there are clan traditions that can only be passed down from elder to child and a child that grows up in an orphanage is cut off from those traditions. It’s not the child’s fault, of course. Sometimes a clan no longer exists. Sometimes, there is no one who can take the child, and no child can be blamed for the failures of their clan. But there’s always something terribly sad about a child who is lost to their clan traditions.

The Dia and Yun clans are still around. Yet, Vanille and Fang are never adopted out. Instead, they stay in the orphanage together, hand in hand, waiting to be separated. Vanille is eight whenthe priests come to visit and she is told that they will never be separated.

“Of course we wouldn’t separate you two,” the younger priest in training says. He sounds young behind his veil, and his voice cracks unexpectedly as he speaks. She can see his flush even with the veil, and giggles

“Besides, your parents were friends as well,” his fellow priestess in training says smoothly. She sounds a little like Vanille’s mother, which hurts more than Vanille expected. “Keeping you together is what they would have wanted us to do with you.”

“They were?” Vanille says, frowning. The priestess gives her a photograph to prove it and Vanille studies the photograph carefully. Her father, blond curly hair caught up in a tail is braiding her mother’s long red hair, while two adults who have Fang’s blue eyes and dark hair are laughing at the sight. It’s the first time she’s seen the photograph and she wonders why no one has shown it to her before now.

Fang beams when she hears the news. “I told you that you were worrying about nothing,” she says.

“Look,” Vanille says, showing her the photograph. “Our parents were friends too!”

“Huh,” Fang says. “Would you look at that.” There’s something inexplicably sad in Fang’s expression, moreso than simple regret that she doesn’t remember her family. It’s not the first time that Fang has shown the loss of her family hurts, but it’s the first time that it’s so naked.

“Don’t cry,” Vanille says. “This just means that we were destined to be best friends forever.”

“Is that so?” Fang says. “Then it has to be true. You’re the one who knows all about destiny.”

“Maybe if you read the Analects you’d know that isn’t true,” Vanille huffs, and Fang laughs.

“Better you than me. Besides, you _like_ that kind of musty old thing.”

She does. History gives her a tie to a past that she pretends she doesn’t have. She suspects that Fang doesn’t like it because it reminds her of a past she doesn’t have, but keeps that suspicion to herself.

*

All Oerba children are taught to defend themselves. Life on Gran Pulse is hard, and even living under the protection of Anima does not protect the village from everything. Even the priests and priestesses in training learn, which is why Vanille takes so long to realize that she and Fang are being pushed harder than the others to learn.

Fang takes to the spear with a single-minded passion, spending much of her time practicing the footwork when she does not have the bladed stick to hand. Soon, she’s sparring against people who have been doing it for as long as she’s been alive. She doesn’t win all the time, but enough to suggest that the block and strike of the spear is her true calling.

Fighting is not where Vanille’s heart lies. She can fight when she has to, because she fights to protect what is hers. What she owns is what Fang owns, and she will not stand by and let Fang lose anything else. She hates to kill, and hates that she has an affinity for it, but is determined to be the master of her rod to protect Fang. It’s all for Fang. She is marked by destiny to do something great and terrible, Vanille is sure of it, and she wants to be there to help her.

What she doesn’t understand is why the priests are so interested in _her_. They’re careful not to say anything directly to her, but she knows anyway. Lies are so easy to tell, so she learns how to tell when someone is lying to her. She knows that there’s a reason why the priests push her to learn scripture but never say anything when she says she wants to be a priestess. In fact, Vanille is sure that they know she will never become one. There’s something in the way that they look at her, tragedy masked behind the veil that hides their faces, that makes her certain.

“What are you talking about?” Fang says, when Vanille tells her about it. “Why wouldn’t they want you?”

Why wouldn’t they, indeed. Vanille can read the analects of the Seer, and she’s told that her understanding of them is remarkable for her age. She thinks, sometimes, that she might understand their silent, divine protector. Sometimes Vanille knows the goddess guides her steps. This belief she keeps to herself, as only the seeress is blessed with the Goddess Etro’s attention, the only god left to the forsaken people of Gran Pulse when Pulse departed. To say something else is heresy. Even now, while talking to the one person Vanille is sure would never betray her. So she lies again.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Vanille says. “Maybe they have a set number.”

Fang snorts and shoves at Vanille’s shoulder. “I should have known. Don’t kid around about that kind of thing. They’re going to take you. I know it.”

“How do you know?”

Fang just rolls her eyes. “I just do. Don’t go questioning me now.”

“ _Faaaang_ ,” Vanille says, drawing out the words as long as she can because she knows that annoys Fang. “I’m serious, you know!”

“That’s your problem,” Fang says. “You get all worked up about the little things. Take it easy!”

Vanille moans emphatically, though most of it is for effect. “I am!”

“There’s few things that you need to take this seriously, and this isn’t one of them,” Fang says. “Besides no matter what, we’ll always be together.”

Vanille takes her hand. It’s strong and callused, like Vanille’s own. They’ve been holding hands for a while now, but this is new. This is not the handholding of children.

“You mean it?”

“Course,” Fang says. “You’ll be a travelling priestess, telling everyone about your old stories.”

“And you’ll protect me.”

“Not that you need it. I saw you with that bear.”

Vanille pets the bear skin around her waist with her spare hand absently. “I couldn’t have done it alone.”

“You won’t have to.”

*

  
Vanille remembers Ragnarok. She remembers watching in horror as Fang’s flesh is moulded under the hands of a fal’Cie to become something terrible. She remembers Fang reaching up to tear the fragile shell of Cocoon down and Vanille remembers begging someone begging someone, anyone to stop Fang because she was only doing it for Vanille.

She never expects an answer.

Then, everything changes.

*

Vanille dreams and with her Fang dreams also. They have spent centuries asleep, dreaming together, and have lived only a scant handful of years. It’s not enough. It could never be enough.

“Do you regret it?” Vanille says. “You could have lived a whole life, free of the fal’Cie, with the others.”

“No,” Fang says. “You’re safe. That’s all I wanted.”

Vanille wanted more. She wanted to atone properly for running from her destiny, for dragging the others into it, and especially for her part in hurting Fang. But this will do for now.

“This is all I wanted too,” she says. Maybe if she says it enough she’ll believe it, for Fang’s sake.


End file.
